{"id":8876,"date":"2015-04-15T09:16:05","date_gmt":"2015-04-15T09:16:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.acnmalta.org\/?p=8876"},"modified":"2015-04-15T09:16:05","modified_gmt":"2015-04-15T09:16:05","slug":"refugees-are-people-like-us-says-acn-director-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2015\/04\/15\/refugees-are-people-like-us-says-acn-director-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Refugees &#8216;are people like us&#8217; says UK Director of Aid to the Church in Need"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\"><\/style><p>Neville Kyrke-Smith (right) said Christians are being tested for their faith.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>By Robert Hiini<\/p>\n<p>31 March, 2015<\/p>\n<p>Mia wore a t-shirt with English writing on it, a prize for being the best student in English in the camp; safe for now in an impermanent home to 2000 families, somewhere in Lebanon\u2019s Beqaa Valley.<br \/>\nHer family are not among them.<\/p>\n<p>The 13-year-old\u2019s father died back in Syria, a couple of years ago; her mother, last week.<\/p>\n<p>She has no siblings.<\/p>\n<p>The Catholic Sisters serving in the camp will be her new family, Neville Kyrke-Smith from the international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) said, speaking of one of the projects the charity supports to a small gathering in Sydney last month.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese Sisters, in the middle of this conflict, are really witnessing to the love of Christ and with due respect to priests and bishops [working in other forums], they are there, quietly getting on with the work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A mere 20km away, the makeshift community sees the bombs detonating on the other side of Baalbek where IS militants executed one of several captured Lebanese soldiers in December; a region reeling in terror, with kidnappings and counter-kidnappings an everyday occurrence.<\/p>\n<p>Whether in Lebanon, or Iraq, or Syria or any number of other hotspots in the Middle East, Christians were being tested for their faith \u2013 intimidated, brutalised and murdered \u2013 Kyrke-Smith said.<\/p>\n<p>Christians in the relatively secure West were also being tested; tested for their solidarity and their love.<\/p>\n<p>The one-time Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism in 1990 is credited with having encouraged Prince Charles to speak out for persecuted Christians at ACN\u2019s freedom report launch last year (the prince, of his own volition, has a long history of speaking out on such matters).<\/p>\n<p>He is better informed than any journalist, receiving on-the-ground reports from ACN\u2019s 20 offices throughout the world, often in places where secular media outlets wouldn\u2019t dare to station crews.<\/p>\n<p>Working through the universal Church, the charity supports Christians and other persecuted groups both materially and spirituality with education, emergency food relief, seminary training, sanitation and housing projects, among others.<\/p>\n<p>Kyrke-Smith said he agreed with UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ant\u00f3nio Guterres\u2019 assessment that the War in Syria had turned into the world\u2019s worst humanitarian crisis since the end of the Cold War.<\/p>\n<p>In a country with a pre-war population of 22 million, 7.6 million were now internally displaced with 12.2 million in need of humanitarian assistance.<\/p>\n<p>Lebanon, a country of 4.2 million people had absorbed more than 1.5 million refugees from Syria alone, taking the total number of refugees in that country to more than 2 million.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPerhaps we sometimes think that refugees are not like us, we think they were born refugees that they\u2019ll always be refugees,\u201d Kyrke-Smith said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow most of you have a mobile phone on you today.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRahed [a refugee in Lebanon who fled the northern Christian town of Mosul when IS invaded in June 2014] told of how his mobile phones from the family were taken, the watches were taken, the camera, the cash, the credit cards.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe gunmen at the checkpoint even demanded that he hand over the battery of his six-year-old son\u2019s hearing aid. He pointed a gun at Rahed\u2019s son and said \u2018no, we want the battery\u2019. That level of inhumanity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRahed and his family were living a comfortable existence with hopes for the children, a nice house.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese people are people like us,\u201d Kyrke-Smith said. \u201cThese are our brothers and sisters.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Neville Kyrke-Smith (right) said Christians are being tested for their faith. &nbsp; By Robert Hiini 31 March, 2015 Mia wore a t-shirt with English writing on it, a prize for being the best student in English in the camp; safe for now in an impermanent home to 2000 families, somewhere in Lebanon\u2019s Beqaa Valley. Her&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8869,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-newsletters"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Refugees &#039;are people like us&#039; says UK Director of Aid to the Church in Need - Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2015\/04\/15\/refugees-are-people-like-us-says-acn-director-3\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Refugees &#039;are people like us&#039; says UK Director of Aid to the Church in Need - Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Neville Kyrke-Smith (right) said Christians are being tested for their faith. &nbsp; By Robert Hiini 31 March, 2015 Mia wore a t-shirt with English writing on it, a prize for being the best student in English in the camp; safe for now in an impermanent home to 2000 families, somewhere in Lebanon\u2019s Beqaa Valley. 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